Welcome to Jazz.com

Topic: Jazz On The Radio / Freddie Hubbard tribute with guest David Baker

The Freddie Hubbard tribute from Tuesday’s WFIU-Bloomington program “Just You and Me” is now posted for online listening. Hubbard friend/musical colleague and cellist/trombonist David Baker stopped by for about the first 45 minutes of the show, and we played a live recording of Freddie’s teenage group the Jazz Contemporaries doing “Tadd’s Delight” on Indiana Avenue in 1957. (This group included a very young Jimmy Spaulding and Larry Ridley as well.)

Topic: Jazz On The Radio / "The Incomplete Sonny Berman" on Night Lights

Woody Herman called trumpeter Sonny Berman “one of the warmest soloists I ever had.” His sound was humorous, lyrical, and harmonically adventurous, with a penchant for bitonality. Berman died at the age of 21 in 1947, leaving behind only a few brilliant solos, most of them recorded with Herman’s big band. We’ll hear him on tracks such as “Your Father’s Mustache,” “Sidewalks of Cuba,” “Pam,” and a V-disc recording of “Don’t Worry ’bout That Mule,” as well as small-group records that he made as a leader and with Serge Chaloff, Ralph Burns, and Herman’s Woodchoppers. Some early sides with saxophonist Georgie Auld are also included in the program.

“Anybody who heard the Herman band in person will remember Sonny’s solos,” writer Barry Ulanov eulogized in Metronome after Berman’s death, “those long cadences and flattened notes piercing the wildest uptempo jazz with such lovely poignancy. There was always something poignant about Sonny, no matter what he was playing or saying, in his role as Yiddish dialectician or knocking everything down before him in his determined pratfalls.”

The Incomplete Sonny Berman airs Saturday, December 27 at 11:05 p.m. EST on WFIU, at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN, and Sunday evening at 10 EST on Michigan’s Blue Lake Public Radio. It is already archived for online listening.

Special thanks to Ira Gitler and to Tom in RI.

Topic: Jazz On The Radio / "The Duke Pearson Songbook" on Night Lights

This program, a tribute to the pianist and composer who helped craft the Blue Note sound of the mid-to-late 1960s, is up for online listening

Topic: Jazz On The Radio / "The Horace Silver Songbook" on Night Lights

For his 80th birthday, coming up this Tuesday:

The Horace Silver Songbook

Night Lights pays tribute to Horace Silver’s compositions this week with performances by Art Blakey, Woody Herman, Art Farmer, Mark Murphy, Eddie Jefferson, Chet Baker, Ran Blake, and Silver himself. The program is now archived for online listening at the link above (which also includes a video of Silver performing “Senor Blues” in 1959).

Topic: Jazz On The Radio / "The Wayne Shorter Songbook" on Night Lights

Now archived for Mr. Shorter’s 75th birthday:

http://nightlights.blogs.wfiu.org/the-wayne-shorter-songbook/

Topic: Jazz On The Radio / "Jazz Impressions of Paris" this week on Night Lights

“Jazz Impressions of Paris” is now archived for online listening, just in time for Bastille Day. (Follow the show-title link in the first post; for some reason, I can’t activate the link in this reply post.)

Topic: Jazz On The Radio / "Jazz Impressions of Paris" this week on Night Lights

Last year Night Lights began an annual Bastille Day-week salute to the convergence of all things French and jazz with Paris Noir , a program about post-World War II expatriate African-American musicians in France. This year our tribute show focuses on jazz interpretations of the many songs that have been written about the City of Light. Jazz Impressions of Paris features music from Bud Powell (”The Last Time I Saw Paris”), Clifford Brown (his and Max Roach’s take on Bud’s “Parisian Thoroughfare”), Duke Ellington (the title theme from the movie Paris Blues), Charlie Parker (Cole Porter’s “I Love Paris,” from Parker’s last studio recording session), and more, including two instrumental odes to the Champs Elysees from Miles Davis and pianist Mal Waldron.

Jazz Impressions of Paris airs Saturday, July 12 at 6 p.m. EST and 11 p.m. EST on WFIU’s HD2 and HD1 channels respectively. For other broadcast times around the country, see our links page . The program will be posted for online listening Monday morning in the Night Lights archives.

Next week: “One More You Wrote Through Us: Horace Tapscott,” with special guest and Tapscott biographer Steven Isoardi.

Topic: Jazz On The Radio / "The Nocturne Records Story" this week on Night Lights

n the early 1950s musicians Roy Harte and Harry Babasin, eager to document the ascending West Coast jazz scene, started a Los Angeles label called Nocturne Records. Babasin and Harte said they wanted to “broaden the nation’s views of our activities out here in Hollywood and to present some of the better musicians who are most normally hidden in the more commercial work of the city, yet who are outstanding jazz musicians in their own right.” Their series of 10-inch LPs, called “Jazz in Hollywood,” featured friends and musical colleagues such as saxophonist Bud Shank, pianist Jimmy Rowles, trumpeter Shorty Rogers, and arranger Marty Paich. We’ll hear recordings from all of those artists and more as we explore the sound of West Coast cool on The Nocturne Records Story (already available for online listening at the preceding link).

Topic: Jazz On The Radio / "Jazz, Spiritually Speaking" this week on Night Lights

Spirituals were African-American religious folksongs that grew out of the slavery experience and the introduction of Christianity into slaves’ lives. Rooted in African musical tradition as well, they reflected life in a strange and terribly oppressive new world. They were often improvisations upon older hymns that became entirely new songs, and in some ways they foreshadow the birth of American jazz. In this program we’ll hear jazz interpretations of spirituals by John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Grant Green, Louis Armstrong, Archie Shepp with Horace Parlan, and more. “Jazz, Spiritually Speaking” airs Saturday, May 17 at 11:05 p.m. EST on WFIU, at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN, and at 10 p.m. EST Sunday evening on Michigan’s Blue Lake Public Radio. You can learn more about spirituals here and here. The program is already posted for online listening in the Night Lights archives.

Topic: Jazz On The Radio / "Jazz Flower Power: the Charles Lloyd Quartet" on Night Lights

For the tenor saxophonist’s 70th birthday:
This week on Night Lights it’s Jazz Flower Power: the Charles Lloyd Quartet, featuring music from Lloyd’s mid-1960s quartet with Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette, along with remarks from Lloyd manager George Avakian. Much more info at the program link above, along with two videos of the Lloyd Quartet performing at Antibes in 1966. “Jazz Flower Power: the Charles Lloyd Quartet” airs Saturday at 11:05 p.m. EST on WFIU-Bloomington and at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN-Evansville it also airs Sunday evening at 10 EST on Michigan’s Blue Lake Public Radio. Jazz Flower Power: the Charles Lloyd Quartet will be available for online listening beginning Monday.

Next week: “Mary Lou Williams’ Zodiac Suite.”

Topic: Jazz On The Radio / "Bix Beiderbecke: Never the Same Way Twice"

Several years ago I did a special for WFIU about Bix Beiderbecke, the legendary cornetist who died at the age of 28 in 1931. The program included interviews with Beiderbecke and Hoagy Carmichael biographer Richard Sudhalter, IU School of Music professor and trumpeter Pat Harbison, and American cultural historian Michael McGerr, along with a wealth of music from Bix’s all-too-brief career from beginning to end. Today, in honor of his 105th birthday, I’m posting it for online listening on the Night Lights site:

Click Here